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Was he a Mossad operative after Hamas targets?

John Berthelsen

The arrest in a Kuala Lumpur hotel of a mysterious 36-year-old Israeli “gangster” possessing six handguns and 200 bullets who traveled from the United Arab Emirates on March 12 using what authorities believed to be a fake French passport, has awakened feverish questions over who was likely to be his prey. It is believed unlikely to be either Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, King Ibrahim Iskandar, or any other high officials – nor, police believe, was it likely to be the rival gangster he told police he had come to Malaysia to gun down.

The suspect, who was said to have shifted from hotel to hotel in Kuala Lumpur before he was apprehended, was identified in Israeli newspapers as Shalom Avitan, an associate of what was described as the Musli brothers crime family. According to multiple news sources, Avitan was en route to assassinate Eran Haya, head of a rival crime family. The two syndicates, the Israeli press reported, have been engaged in a violent feud for months and that Avitan’s upscale home, in Tel Aviv’s Bavli neighborhood had been targeted by grenades tossed by Haya’s men in mid-March, around when Haya was said to have entered Malaysia.

Three Malaysian citizens including a married couple have also been remanded into custody for allegedly providing Avitan with his weapons and acting as his driver, for which he is said to have paid using cryptocurrency. That raises questions how an Israeli apparently new to the country, a gangster seeking revenge against a rival, could fly into a hostile nation where conviction or possession of a firearm or even ammunition could result in imprisonment for up to seven years, or to a fine up to RM10,000 (US$2114) or both, make contacts and apparently be set to begin a shooting spree. Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said police have established several more names and action will be taken against them.

“The most important question is why he needed six guns,” said a Kuala Lumpur source. “He claimed the guy grenaded his house in Israel. But nobody knows. The Malaysian police are no good at questioning. They just beat you up. They need to get some Singaporeans. They were trained by the Israelis.”

As several sources pointed out, the gangster tale could well be a cover story if he was caught, and that Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence service, has a long record of inventing disguises and stratagems to strike at enemies far from the borders of the besieged Middle Eastern country, and that Israeli news sources are not above helping out the intelligence services with a cover story. 

Although Israel has no diplomatic relations with Malaysia, its shipping company Zim had permission to dock in Malaysia since 2002 until the current Middle East crisis led to Malaysia’s suspension. Mossad has long been believed to maintain surveillance of the range of Islamic outlaws allowed permission to stay in the country. Police haven’t ruled out the possibility that Avitan could be a Mossad operative.

Malaysia is home to around 600 Palestinian refugees, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Palestine Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM), an NGO headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, has long been believed to be a Hamas front. Mossad is believed to have struck in the past in Malaysia, for instance in 2018 when two gunmen who were never caught fired 10 shots from a motorcycle at a Palestinian engineering lecturer named Fadi al-Batsh, killing him instantly. Fadi, who may or may not have been a member of Hamas, was said to be skilled in rocketry. In September 2022, local media reported that two Palestinian computer programmers abducted by Malaysians, supposedly on Mossad’s instructions, managed to get away although the connection was never proven.

“Malaysia is sort of like the Beirut of Southeast Asia, and a good place to take out dangerous Muslims who reside there,” said a source with contacts inside Malaysia’s Special Branch intelligence service. “I suspect he with others were after some Hamas people in KL.”

Certainly, the country has made no secret of its relationship to Hamas. Shortly after the October 7 Hamas attack on the Israeli kibbutzim that killed 1,400 people, almost all of them innocent civilians, which spurred the Israeli Defense Forces’ all-out attack on the Gaza enclave, Anwar reiterated Palestine’s right to defend itself and said Malaysia would continue its relationship with Hamas irrespective of pressure from the United States. The US has continued its all-out support of Israel’s war, which now has taken the lives of nearly 33,000 people, including more than 13,000 children and 8,400 women, injured more than 75,000 and left more than 8,000 missing, spurring widespread global calls for a cease fire. The IDF has reported losing 256 dead.

US efforts to restrict external parties from supporting Hamas are unilateral and Malaysia will not recognize them, Anwar was quoted as telling Parliament shortly after the crisis blew up. “Whatever happened is the legitimate right and struggle of the Palestinian people,” he said.

Malaysia has played official host to “all sorts of terrorists, criminals, political exiles, people with arrest warrants by police in other countries,” wrote popular blogger Syed Akbar Ali, who blogs at OutSyed The Box. “ And some of them have been shot dead or assassinated here in Malaysia. Malaysia has a long history of allowing political exiles, wanted terrorists, people with arrest warrants from other countries to enter the country. This has been our style.” Many, he said, have used Malaysia as a base from which to carry on their activities, as a transit point, or as a safe haven for some rest and recreation, with many wanted by their own governments.

“We should not be surprised that political assassinations take place in Malaysia occasionally,” wrote Prof James Chin, a Malaysian who is director of the Asia Institute of Tasmania at the University of Tasmania, when North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un arranged for the murder of his own brother at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in 2017. “As long as Malaysia allows political exiles who are still active to live in Malaysia, political violence not related to Malaysia will occur on Malaysian soil. The Kim killing was not the first and will not be the last.”